I spent last week with two amazing colleagues (and friends) leading 34 terrific students through the Bighorn Mountains, the Beartooth Mountains, Yellowstone and Tetons. Here are some of the beautiful places we visited:
Sunrise in the Bighorns
Grasslands
Beartooth mountains and a beautiful hike to a cirque lake.
Yellowstone
Grand Tetons
Day one of our western trip went great. The Bighorn Mountains are beautiful and it was really nice to have cooler temps at 80000ft!
My color of the day was Blue…purple flowers are close enough!
I had to fly away from the girl today. We were both sad, but we are both watching the sunrise and sunset together…just from different spots.
Sunset in the Black Hills:
The girl has a bug in her beret about going to Paris. I’m not sure why…the inspiration came from some lyrics to a song she loves. We aren’t going to make it to France this year, but a girl can dream cant she?
The girl and her mommy had an excellent camping trip to the exotic wilds of our backyard!
We explored together and found lots of amazing critters:
We finally settled into the tent.
After dark, we ate marshmallows, made shadow puppets and let daddy come for a quick kiss night night.
It was an amazing adventure. Maybe Amos can come next time…but he’s too spoiled…and prefers to sleep on a chair.
This girl is determined. I think this photo captures it perfectly! (And it’s hilarious)
She has been working so hard to get stronger. Some days I’m so frustrated with the pace, but she just keeps working. This is a good lesson for me… polepole slowly, slowly. So with determination I will continue to encourage her! I know she will succeed.
She’s going to fly!
While the girl was in the hospital, there were lots of people who came to play with her or bring her toys and games that she could play while she was flat on her back. The Child-life specialists are certainly a big part of what makes Lurie Children’s Hospital such an amazing place. Of course, we also had so many friends who made the girl feel special and helped to pass the time quickly. The girl and I were talking about how blessed we are to have had so much support. In the same conversation I told her about my upcoming trip to Uganda. I will be visiting Kagando Mission Hospital. I told her that the children there wouldn’t have many toys (if any) to cheer them up. I asked her if she would like to do something for them to help them feel better faster. She is very excited about our plan. We are going to put together gift bags for the children at Kagando. There are 50-60 children in the hospital (on average) at a time. Many are infants. We are going to collect as many matchbox cars and small dolls/animals (car-sized) as well as hats for the neonates as the girl’s mom can fit in her suitcase. The girl and her friends are going to color paper bags (kind of like a get-well card). It’s not much, but hopefully we can learn something about loving our neighbors! If anyone reading this would like to help, contact the girl’s mom via email (kristenpage@gmail.com) or leave a comment.